1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the fitting of golf clubs to users, and more particularly, to the use of an artificial intelligence expert system to fit golf clubs based upon the primal swing characteristics of a golfer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Artificial intelligence expert systems are computer programs that emulate the behavior of a human expert in a well-bounded domain of knowledge. They have been used in a number of situations, ranging from sheep reproduction management in Australia, hurricane damage assessment in the Caribbean, boiler plant operation in Japan, computer configuration in the United States, and strategic management consulting in Europe. Expert systems technology has been around since the late 1950s, but it has been only since the early 1980's that the commercialization of expert systems has emerged.
An expert system typically has three major components: the dialog structure, inference engine, and knowledge base. The dialog structure is the user interface that allows the user to interact with the expert system. The inference engine is the control structure within the expert system that houses the search strategies to allow the expert system to arrive at various conclusions. The third component is the knowledge base, which is the set of facts and rules of thumb about a specific domain step.